No, Sharks have not asked Thornton or Marleau to waive their no-trade clauses — plus Sheppard to the Rangers and rest of team huddles off-site

My main mission this morning was to check with Patrick Marleau to see if anyone had approached him about waiving his no-trade clause, what with the deadline upon us Monday. That didn’t happen over the summer and it turns out it still hasn’t happened with either Marleau or Joe Thornton.

Then I asked Marleau if his level of interest in staying was the same as it was last summer.

“Yeah. If I’m not wanted, then that’s a different matter.”

Wait, does that imply that if someone did approach you saying they wanted to trade you, you might be open to hear what they had to say?

“I’d hate to speculate.”

Thornton has not been asked to waive his no-trade clause either, by the way. And I have the sense there wouldn’t be any hedging on his part, that Thornton has no interest in going anywhere.

***Now, back to an unusual day during an unusual time for the Sharks.

What was supposed to be a practice to get ready for the Montreal Canadiens ended up as a players-only gathering for lunch away from the rink. From what I’ve been able to figure out – and that’s limited – it wasn’t so much a meeting as it was a get-together.

Then there was the not-unexpected trade of James Sheppard — one of many pending unrestricted free agents who have to know they’re being shopped around – to the New York Rangers for a fourth-round pick in 2016 as the Sharks are deadline-day sellers for the first time maybe a decade, maybe more. Sure, Doug Wilson traded away Douglas Murray and Ryane Clowe a couple years ago – but he also brought in Raffi Torres as the Sharks were working both ends of the equation.

Add in the fact that Todd McLellan was in a pretty talkative mood, all things considered – and maybe that’s because a couple Montreal reporters were part of the conversation today – and there were more tidbits of information to pass along than the usual quiet Sunday.

(Pretty funny scene actually – three of us from the Bay Area barely outnumbering the two visiting journalists who are used to dozens of media types surrounding a coach and cannot believe their good fortune.)

Anyway, I tried to weave the disparate elements into one print story that you can find online here .

Other revelations worth sharing:

***The Montreal writers were focused understandably on Marc-Edouard Vlasic. One asked McLellan about the current leadership structure – similar to Montreal’s – where there is no captain per se.

Could Vlasic be the next captain, McLellan was asked.

“Could Marc-Edouard Vlasic be the next captain of this team?,” McLellan repeated. “I think he’s got work to do.”

McLellan suggested that no change was imminent in the team’s current leadership structure that has four players – Joe Thornton, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Marleau and Pavelski – serving as alternate captains. And he saw the value of seeing how different players handle things during this extended rough period.

“It’s easy to pick four captains when you’re won seven games in a row,” McLellan said. “Hell, my wife could come in and be a captain at that point. But, what happens when it’s raining? Who goes where, and who’s hiding in the hole? Who’s sticking his head out?”

***And he also stopped short of endorsing Pavelski when given the opportunity. After all, we all saw in the EPIX series how Pavelski spoke up in the room after a horrible first period, said things needed to change in a profanity-laced address and then scored a hat-trick to lead San Jose to the win.

“I said before, Pav did a tremendous job in that moment,” McLellan said. “(But) you don’t know what happened on the bench, and you don’t know what happened when the cameras were off.”

***McLellan also made it clear that when he talks about leadership stepping up, he includes himself and management as well.

“I’m part of the leadership group, so, I made that real clear in the summer, too,” he said. “Doug and I are leaders on this team, and there’s a leadership group, so when we talked about the leadership and the change and everything to make it stronger, we’re talking about ourselves, too.

“We’re not just including anybody who wears a little piece of felt. It has to get better for all of us.”
Marleau, by the way, was standing outside McLellan’s office at the time, waiting for the reporters who had asked to see him. And, yes, he heard the comment – mentioning felt later when the topic came up. He didn’t seem offended.

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.